Deal is sealed to bring Olympic team to Durham (From Durham Times)

Deal is sealed to bring Olympic team to Durham

1:13pm Friday 23rd October 2009

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SRI Lanka’s 2012 Olympics team will be based in Durham in the run up to the London games, it was announced this week.

The south Asian island nation’s top athletes will fine tune their talents at Durham University - which became the first North-East institution to seal a deal to host a team for the much anticipated sporting spectacle.

The Durham agreement follows an announcement in July that the North-East was in exclusive talks with Colombian officials regarding the South American nation’s athletes training in the region ahead of the games.

A Memorandum of Understanding was confirmed as top by Mark Tallentire news@durhamtimes.co.uk Olympics organisers visited the region, with Sri Lankan athletes set to use Durham’s Graham Sports Centre.

Olympic officials also visited Hartlepool Marina, Hardwick Hall Hotel, in Sedgefield, and were given a tour of Middlesbrough FC’s Rockcliffe training ground near Darlington by club chief executive Keith Lamb and the then manager Gareth Southgate.

Dan Lewis, deputy director of sport at Durham University, said: “We are very pleased to be able to offer Sri Lanka’s elite athletes the use of our sport facilities.

“We do a lot of work with local communities in Sri Lanka since the tsunami and we are always keen to further strengthen these links.

“Our students and partners will no doubt benefit from sharing the facilities with the Olympic athletes – feeling more closely connected to, and part of, the Olympics as a result.

“The planned facility developments over the next 18 months will further strengthen our resource to fulfil the needs of both our own world class athletes and those visiting us.”

Hemasiri Fernando, president of Sri Lanka’s Olympic committee, said he was delighted to be working with the university.

Sri Lanka’s national sport is volleyball, with cricket and rugby union also popular. The island’s coastal areas are hot spots for boating, surfing and swimming.

The country has competed in every summer Olympics since 1948, except for 1976. Its athletes have won two medals: a silver in the 1948 men’s 400m hurdles and bronze in the 2000 women’s 200m.

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